Rudolf Steiner Archive & e.Lib Document

Social and Anti-Social Forces in the Human Being

A lecture by
Rudolf Steiner
Bern, December 12, 1918
GA 186

This edition of: Social and Anti-Social Forces in the Human Being, is
a revised translation by Christopher Schaefer of a lecture given by
Dr. Rudolf Steiner in Bern on December 12, 1918. It is published in
German in the cycle: Die Sozialen Grundforderungen Unserer Zeit, 1963,
by the Rudolf Steiner – Nachlassverwaltung in Dornach, Switzerland.
It appeared in the ANTHROPOSOPHICAL REVIEW in two sections, in Vol. I,
No. 2 and No. 3, 1979.

Thanks to an anonymous donation, this lecture has been made available.

Social and Anti-Social Forces in the Human Being

The times themselves speak clearly enough, demanding that we should
apply to the conditions and activities of these times those feelings
and modes of thinking which we have acquired from our studies of
Spiritual Science. Not only do outward circumstances speak clearly,
but our conceptions of Spiritual Science also justify us in a certain
way, especially in what we have to say today. In many if our basic
ways of looking at the world, we have started from one fundamental
fact of human evolution, from the fact that this evolution is
accomplished by successive stages of which the most important and most
related to us began with the great Atlantean Catastrophe, namely this
Post-Atlantean Epoch. Four periods of it have passed by, while we are
now living in the Fifth Post-Atlantean Period. This period of
development, which began in the 15th century of our Christian era, is
the one which we can designate as the period of the Spiritual or
Consciousness Soul. Other soul forces have been especially evolved in
other periods of civilization. In our civilization which has followed
the Greco-Latin civilization from the first half of the 15th century,
humanity must gradually develop the Spiritual Soul. The preceding
period, which commenced in the 8th century B.C. and finished in the
15th century A.D., was pre-eminently the period in which humanity
developed the Intellectual or Mind Soul.

Now we need not give a full description of these cultural stages, but
we will particularly look at what is a peculiarity of our age — this
age which has comparatively few centuries behind it. Each age lasts on
average about 2000 years. Therefore much remains to be done in this
period of the Spiritual Soul. The task of humanity — of civilized
humanity in this age of the Spiritual Soul — will be that of laying
hold of the whole human being and making him entirely dependent on
himself, of lifting into the full light of consciousness much of that
which in earlier periods man felt instinctively and judged
instinctively.

Many present difficulties and much that is chaotic around us in our
era, become quite explicable when one knows that the task of our era
is to raise that which is instinctive to the plane of consciousness.
What is instinctive in us happens to a certain degree by itself, but
to achieve a conscious result one must make an inward effort, above
all, to begin to think truly with one's whole being. Man tries to
avoid this, he does not willingly take a conscious part in the shaping
of world conditions. Here is a point over which many are indeed
deceived today. Men today think the following: Well, today we live in
the period of the development of thought. People are proud of the fact
that there is more thinking nowadays than in the past. But this is an
illusion — one of the many illusions in which humanity lives today.
This comprehension on which people pride themselves today is mainly
instinctive. Only when the instinctive nature which has appeared in
the evolution of humanity and which so proudly speaks of thought —
only when this instinctive nature becomes instead an active element,
when the intellect does not depend merely on the brain but springs
from the whole man, when it is separated from rationalism and is
lifted to the plane of Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition — only
then will that gradually emerge which seeks to emerge in the Fifth
Post-Atlantean Period, the period of the Spiritual Soul. That which
meets man today and which is clearly indicated even in the worldly
thought of the present epoch is something which one continuously needs
to mention the appearance of the so-called Social Question.

But he who has earnestly studied our anthroposophically oriented
Spiritual Science will easily perceive that the essential impulse in
the shaping of the social order (whether belonging to the State or
not) must come from that which human beings can develop out of
themselves, as it is this which regulates the relationship between
people. Everything which the human being develops out of himself
naturally corresponds to certain impulses which are ultimately found
in our soul and spirit life. If one looks at the matter this way, one
is able to ask: Must attention not then be directed above all to the
social impulses or to the social instincts, movements or forces
emerging in human nature? We can, if you like, call these social
impulses, social drives; but we must keep in mind that they should not
only be thought of as mere unconscious instincts since when we speak
of social instincts today, we must take into account that we live in
the age of the Consciousness Soul and that these drives seek to press
up into consciousness.

Now, if these things are to count for us, then we must find social
impulses which seek to become reality. But in so doing we must
recognize the terrible one-sidedness of our age, which should not of
course be deplored, but which should be looked at calmly because it
has to be overcome. Man has such a great inclination in our day to
look at things one-sidedly. But a pendulum cannot swing from the
central point out to one side without also swinging back to the other.
Just as little as a pendulum can swing to one side only, can social
impulses of men be expressed by only one side. This is because the
social impulses are quite naturally opposed by anti-social impulses in
the human being. Precisely because one finds social impulses or drives
in human nature, one also finds the opposite. This fact must above all
be considered.

The social leaders and agitators, for example, live in the illusion
that they need only spread certain ideas or need only appeal to a
class of man who is willing and disposed (provided ideas are there) to
help forward the social impulse. It is an illusion to act in this way,
for in so doing one forgets that if social forces are working, then
anti-social forces are also present. What we must be able to do today
is to look these things straight in the face without illusion. It is
only from the viewpoint of Spiritual Science that they can be looked
at straightly without illusion. One is tempted to say that people are
sleeping through the most important thing of all in life when they do
not begin to look at life from the viewpoint of Spiritual Science.

We must ask ourselves: What is the relation between people with regard
to social and anti-social forces? We need to see that the relationship
between people is fundamentally a complicated matter. When one person
meets another, I would say we must look into the situation radically.
Meetings of course point to differences which vary according to
specific circumstances; but we must fix our eyes on the common
characteristics, we must clearly see the common elements in the
meeting, in the confrontation between one person and another. We must
ask ourselves: What really happens then, not merely in that which
presents itself to the senses, but in the total situation, when one
person stands opposite another, when one person meets another? Nothing
less than that a certain force works from one person to the other. The
meeting of one with another leads to the working of a certain force
between them. We cannot confront another person in life with
indifference, not even in mere thoughts and feelings, even though we
may be separated from them by distance. If we have any kind of
relation to other people, or any communication with them, then a force
flows between us creating a bond. It is this fact which lies at the
basis of social life and which, when broadened, is really the
foundation for the social structure of humanity.

One sees this phenomenon most clearly when one thinks of the direct
interchange between two people. The impression which one person makes
on the other has the effect of lulling the other to sleep. Thus we
frequently find in social life that one person gets lulled to
sleepiness by the other with whom he has interchange. As a physicist
might say: a “latent tendency” is always there for one man
to lull another to sleep in social relationships.

Why is this so? Well, we must see that this rests on a very important
arrangement of man's total being. It rests on the fact that what we
call social impulses, fundamentally speaking are only present in
people of our present day consciousness during sleep. You are, in so
far as you have not yet attained clairvoyance, really only penetrated
by social forces when you are asleep, and only that which continues to
work out of sleeping into waking conditions works into ordinary waking
consciousness as a social impulse. When you know this, you do not need
to be surprised when your social being seeks to lull you to sleep in
your relationship with others. In the relationship between people the
social impulse ought to develop. Yet it can only develop during sleep.
Therefore in the relationship between people a tendency is shown for
one person to dull the consciousness of the other so that a social
relation may be established between them. This striking fact is
evident to one who studies the realities of life. Above all things,
our interchange with one another leads to dulling the consciousness of
one another, in the interests of a social impulse between people. Of
course you cannot go about continually asleep in life. Yet the
tendency to establish social impulses consists in, and expresses
itself by, an inclination to sleep. That of which I speak goes on
subconsciously of course, but it nevertheless actually penetrates our
life continuously. Thus there exists a permanent disposition to fall
asleep precisely for the building up of the social structure of
humanity.

On the other hand, something else is also working. A perpetual
struggle and opposition to falling asleep in social relationships is
also present. If you meet a person you are continuously standing in a
conflict situation in the following way: Because you meet him, the
tendency to sleep always develops in you so that you may experience
your relationship to him in sleep. But, at the same time, there is
aroused in you the counter-force to keep yourself awake. This always
happens in the meeting between people — a tendency to fall asleep, a
tendency to keep awake. In this situation a tendency to keep awake has
an anti-social character, the assertion of one's individuality, of
one's personality, in opposition to the social structure of society.
Simply because we are human beings, our soul-life swings to and fro
between the social and the antisocial. And that which lives in us as
these two forces, which may be observed between people communicating,
can from an occult perspective be seen to govern our life. When we
meet social arrangements and structures in society, even if these
arrangements seem far-fetched from the seemingly wise consciousness of
the present, they are still a manifestation of this pendulum between
social and anti-social forces. The national economist may reflect upon
what credit, capital and interest are. Yet even these things which
make for regularity in social transactions are only outward swings of
the pendulum between social and anti-social forces. The person who
seeks to find healing remedies for these times must intelligently and
scientifically connect with these facts. For how is it that social
demands arise in our time? Well, we live in the age of the Spiritual
or Consciousness Soul in which man must become independent. But on
what does this depend? It depends on people's ability during our Fifth
Post-Atlantean Period to become self-assertive, to not allow themselves
to be put to sleep. It is the anti-social forces which require
development in this time, for consciousness to be present. It would
not be possible for mankind in the present to accomplish its task if
just these anti-social forces did not become ever more powerful; they
are indeed the pillars on which personal independence rests. At
present, humanity has no idea how much more powerful anti-social
impulses must become, right on until the 30th century. For men to
progress properly, anti-social forces must develop

In earlier periods the development of the anti-social forces was not
the spiritual bread of humanity's evolution. There was therefore no
need to establish a counter-force. Indeed none was set. In our day,
when a person on his own account, for his individual self, must evolve
antisocial forces, which are evolving because man is now subjected to
this evolution against which nothing will prevail, there must also
come about that with which man resists them: a social structure which
will balance this anti-social evolutionary tendency. The anti-social
forces must work inwardly so that human beings may reach the height of
their development. Outwardly, in social life, structures must work so
that people do not totally lose their outer connections in life. Hence
the social demands of the present. They can in a certain sense be seen
as the demand for a justified outer balance to the inward, essentially
anti-social evolutionary tendency of humanity in the Fifth
Post-Atlantean Epoch.

From this you can see that nothing is accomplished by seeing things in
a one-sided way. As men live nowadays, certain words (I will not say
ideas or feelings), certain words have certain values. The word
“anti-social” arouses a degree of antipathy. It is considered as
something evil. Very well; we perhaps need not trouble ourselves
whether it is considered good or bad, since it is quite necessary. Be
it good or bad, it is connected with the necessary tendencies of
evolution in our time. It is simply sheer nonsense to say that the
anti-social impulses must be resisted, for they cannot be resisted.
One must grasp the essential inner development of mankind in our time,
understand the evolutionary tendency. It is not a matter of finding
prescriptions for resisting the anti-social forces; but of so shaping,
of so arranging the social order, the structure, the organization of
that which lies outside of the individual, that a counter-balance is
present to that which works as anti-social force within human beings.
Therefore it is vital for our time that the individual achieves
independence, but that social forms provide a balance to this
independence. Otherwise neither the individual nor society can develop
properly.

In earlier periods there were tribes and classes. Our age strives
against this. Our age is no longer able to divide people into classes
but must consider them in their totality and create social structures
which take this totality into account. I said yesterday in my public
lecture that slavery could exist in the Greco-Latin Period; one was
the master, the other the slave. Then men were divided. Today we have
as a remnant just that which disturbs the working-man so much, namely
that his power to work is sold; in this way something belonging to him
is organized from outside. This must go; it is only possible to
organize socially what does not integrally belong to the human being,
such as his position or the function to which he is appointed, in
short, something which is not an inner part of the individual. All
this which we acknowledge with regard to the necessary development of
social democracy is really so, and must be so understood.

Just as no man can claim to do arithmetic if he has never learned his
multiplication tables, so too he cannot claim to discuss social
reforms and the like when he has never learned those things which we
have just explained: namely, that socialism and anti-socialism exist
quite concretely in the way described. People in some of the most
important positions in society, when they begin talking about present
social demands, often appear to those who know, as individuals who
wish to begin building a bridge over a rushing stream without having
the mast elementary knowledge of mechanics. They may well be able to
put up a bridge, but it will collapse at the first opportunity. It
seems with social leaders or with those who look after social
institutions, that their plans will be shown to be impossible; for the
things of reality demand that we work with them, and not against them.
It is therefore tremendously important that those things which form
the backbone of our anthroposophical thought and consciousness should
one day be taken seriously.

One of the impulses which ensoul us in the sphere of our
anthroposophical movement is that we, in a sense, carry into the whole
of man's life that which most people apply only to youth. We sit on
the “school-bench” of life long after we have become grey. This
is one of the differences between us and others, who believe that at the age
of 25, or sometimes 26, when they have finished lazying about with
their education, that they are ready for the rest of life — at most
there may still be some amusing additions to one's education.

But when we approach the very nerve of Spiritual Science, we feel that
the human being really must continue to learn throughout his whole
life if he wishes to tackle the tasks of life. It is vital that we
should be permeated with this feeling. If we do not get rid of the
belief that people can master everything with the faculties they have
developed up to their 20th or 25th year, that then one only has to
meet in Parliament or some other forum to decide all affairs — as
long as we do not get rid of this view, we shall never be able to
establish healthy conditions in the social structure of mankind.

The study of the reciprocal relation between the social and the
anti-social is extremely significant for our time. Just this
anti-social tendency is of the utmost importance to understand because
it must make itself felt and must be developed in us. This anti-social
spirit can only be held in balance by the social. But the social must
be nursed, must be consciously cared for. And in our day this becomes
truly more and more difficult because the anti-social forces are
really in accord with our natural development.

The social element is essential; it must be cherished. We shall see
that in this Fifth Post-Atlantean Period there is a tendency to take no
notice of the social in merely acting naturally. Rather it must be
acquired consciously in working with one's soul forces, while formerly
it was felt instinctively in man. What is necessary and must be
actively acquired is the interest of man in man. This is indeed the
backbone of all social life.

It almost sounds paradoxical to say today that no clear conception of
the so-called difficult ideas of economics can be gained if the
interest of one for another does not increase, if people do not begin
to compare the illusions which have sway in social life with present
realities. One who really thinks about it recognizes the fact that
simply by being a member of society one is in a complicated relation
to others. Imagine that you have a $5 note in your pocket, and you
make use of this $5 note by going shopping one morning, and you spend
the full $5. What does it mean that you go out with a $5 note in your
pocket? The $5 note is really an illusion — it is worth nothing in
reality (even if it is metal money. At this point I do not want to
discuss the theories of the Metalists and the Nominalists with regard
to money; but even if it is metal money, it is still an illusion and
of no real worth). Money is namely only a ‘go-between’. And only
because in our day a certain social order exists, an order belonging
purely to the State, therefore this $5 note which you have spent in
the morning for different items is nothing else than an equivalent for
so many days of labour of so many men. A number of men must have
completed so many days of work, so much human labour must have flowed
into the social order — must have crystallized itself into
merchandise — in order for the apparent worth of the bank note to
have any real value, but only at the command of the social order. The
bank note only gives you the power to call into your service so much
labour, or to put it another way, to command its worth in work. You
can picture it in your mind: There I have a bank note, which assigns
to me, according to my social position, the power over so many men. If
you now see these workmen selling their labour hour by hour, as the
equivalent value of that which you have in your purse as the $5 note,
then you begin to get a picture of the real facts.

Our relationships have become so complicated that we no longer pay
attention to these things, especially if they do not concern us
closely. I have an example which easily clarifies this. In the more
difficult considerations of economics, in the areas of capital and
interest and credit, things are quite complicated; so that even
university professors and political economists, whose position should
mean possession of adequate insight, really have no knowledge. Thus
you can see that it is necessary to look at things correctly in these
areas. Of course we cannot immediately take in hand the reform of the
national economy, which has been forced into such a helpless condition
by what is nowadays taught as political economy. But we can at least
ask with respect to national education and other such matters: What
must be done so that social life and forms are consciously established
in opposition to anti-social forces? What is really required? I said
that it would be difficult in our time for people to develop
sufficient interest in each other. You do not have sufficient interest
if you think that you can buy yourself something with a $5 note and do
not remember the fact that this brings about a social relationship
with certain other human beings and their labour-power. You only have
an adequate interest when in your picture you are able to substitute
for each apparent transaction (such as the exchange of goods for a $5
note) the real transaction which is linked with it.

Now, I would say that the mere egoistic, soul-stirring talk of loving
our fellow-men and acting upon this love at the first opportunity,
that this does not constitute social life. This sort of love is, for
the most part, terribly egoistic. Many a man is supported by what he
has first gained through robbing his fellow-men in a truly patriarchal
fashion, in order to create for himself an object for his self-love,
so that he can then feel nice and warm with the thought, “You are
doing this, you are doing that” One does not easily discover that a
large part of the so-called love of doing good is a masked self-love.
Therefore, the main consideration is not merely to think of what lies
nearest to hand, thereby enhancing our self-love, but to feel it our
duty to look carefully at the many-sided social structures in which we
are placed. We must at first lay the foundations for such
understanding. Yet few today are disposed to do so.

I would like to discuss one question from the viewpoint of general
education, namely: How can we consciously establish social impulses to
balance those anti-social forces which are developing naturally within
us? How can we cultivate the social element, this interest of man in
man, so that it springs up in us — going ever further and deeper, and
leaving us no rest? How can we enkindle this interest which has
disappeared so pitiably in our age, the age of the Spiritual Soul? In
our age true chasms have already been created between people. Men have
no idea about the manner in which they pass one another by without in
the least comprehending each other. The desire to understand the other
in all his or her uniqueness is very weak today. On the one hand, we
have the cry for social union; and on the other, the ever-increasing
spread of purely anti-social principles. The blindness of people
toward each other can be seen in the many clubs and societies which
people form. They do not provide any opportunity for people to get to
know one another. It is possible for men to meet one another for years
and not to know each other better at the end than they did at the
beginning. The precise need of the future is that the social shall be
brought to meet the antisocial in a systematic way. For this there are
various inner soul methods. One is that we frequently attempt to look
back over our present incarnation to survey what has happened to us in
this life through our relations with others. If we are honest in this,
most of us will say: Nowadays we generally regard the entrance of many
people into our life in such a way that we see ourselves, our own
personalities, as the center of the review. What have we gained from
this or that person who has come into our life? This is our natural
way of feeling. It is exactly this which we must try to combat. We
should try in our souls to think of others, such as teachers, friends,
those who have helped us and also those who have injured us (to whom
we often owe more than to those who, from a certain point of view,
have been of use to us). We should try to allow these pictures to pass
before our souls as vividly as possible in order to see what each has
done.

We shall see, if we proceed in this way, that by degrees we learn to
forget ourselves, that in reality we find that almost everything which
forms part of us could not be there at all unless this or that person
had affected our lives, helping us on or teaching us something. When
we look back on the years in the more distant past to people with whom
we are no longer in contact and about whom it is easier to be
objective, then we shall see how the soul-substance of our life has
been created by the people and circumstances of the past. Our gaze
then extends over a multitude of people whom we have known in the
course of time. If we try to develop a sense of the debt we owe to
this or that person — if we try to see ourselves in the mirror of
those who have influenced us in the course of time, and who have been
associated with us — then we shall be able to experience the
opening-up of a new sense in our souls, a sense which enables us to gain a
picture of the people whom we meet even in the present, with whom we
stand face to face today. This is because we have practiced developing
an objective picture of our indebtedness to people in the past. It is
tremendously important that the impulse should awaken in us, not
merely to feel sympathy or antipathy towards the people we meet, not
merely to hate or love something connected with the person, but to
awaken a true picture of the other in us, free from love or hate.

Perhaps you will not feel that what I am saying now is extremely
important — but it is. For this ability to picture the other in
oneself without love or hate, to allow the other individual to appear
again within our soul, this is a faculty which is decreasing week by
week in the evolution of humanity. It is something which men are, by
degrees, completely losing. They pass one another by without arousing
any interest in each other. Yet this ability to develop an imaginative
faculty for the other is something that must enter into pedagogy and
the education of children. For we can really develop this imaginative
faculty in us if, instead of striving after the immediate sensations
of life as is often done today, we are not afraid to look back quietly
in our soul and see our relationships to other human beings. Then we
shall be in a position to relate ourselves imaginatively to those whom
we meet in the present. In this way we awaken the social instinct in
us against the anti-social which quite unconsciously and of necessity
continues to develop. This is one side of the picture.

The other is something that can be linked up with this review of our
relations to others. It is when we try to become more and more
objective about ourselves. Here we must also go back to our earlier
years. Then we can directly, so to speak, go to the facts themselves.
Suppose you are 30 or 40 years of age. You think, “How was it with me
when I was ten years old? I will imagine myself entirely into the
situation of that time. I will picture myself as another boy or girl
of ten years old. I will try to forget that I was that; I will really
take pains to objectify myself.” This objectifying of oneself, this
freeing of oneself in the present from one's own past, this
shelling-out of the Ego from its experiences, must be specially
striven for in our present time. For the present has the tendency
towards linking up the Ego more and more with its experiences.

Nowadays man wants to be instinctively that which his experiences make
him. For this reason it is so very difficult to acquire the activity
which Spiritual Science gives. The spirit must make a fresh effort
each time. According to true occult science, nothing can be done by
comfortably remaining in one's position. One forgets things and must
always be cultivating them afresh. This is just as it should be
because fresh efforts need to continually be made. He who has already
made some progress in the realm of Spiritual Science attempts the most
elementary things every day; others are ashamed to pay attention to
the basics. For Spiritual Science, nothing should depend on
remembering, but on man's immediate experience in the present. It is
therefore a question of training ourselves in this faculty — through
making ourselves objective — that we picture this boy or girl as if
he or she were a stranger at an earlier time in our lives; of
bestirring ourselves more and more, of getting free of events, and of
being less haunted at 30 by the impulses of a 10 year old. Detachment
from the past does not mean denial of the past. We gain it in another
way again, and that is what is so important. On the one hand, we
cultivate the social instinct and impulses in us by looking back upon
those who have been connected with us in the past and regarding our
souls as the products of these persons. In this way we acquire the
imagination for meeting people in the present. On the other hand,
through objectifying ourselves we gain possibilities of developing
imagination directly. This objectifying of our earlier years is
fruitful insofar as it does not work in us unconsciously. Think for a
moment: If the 10 year old child works on unconsciously in you, then
you are the 30 or 40 year old augmented by the 10 year old. It is just
the same with the 11, the 12 year old child and so on. Egoism has
tremendous power, but its power is lessened when you separate the
earlier years from yourself and when you make them objective. This is
the important point on which we must fix our attention.

The following pre-condition for social activity must be made clear to
those people who raise social claims in unreasonable and illusory
fashion: Understanding about how man can develop himself as a socially
creative being must first be present in this period, when anti-social
forces are growing ever stronger as part of human evolution.

What will then have been achieved? You will discover the whole meaning
of what I have now explained if you consider the following: In 1848
there appeared a social document which continues to work into the
present day in radical socialism, and in Bolshevism. It was the
Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx, which contains ideas which rule the
thoughts and feelings of many working men. Karl Marx was able to
dominate the labour world for the simple reason that he wrote and said
what the working man thinks and understands, as a working man. This
Communist Manifesto the contents of which I do not need to explain to
you, appeared in 1848. It was the first document, the first seed in
what has now borne fruit, after the recent destruction of opposing
movements. This document contains one slogan, one sentence which you
will often find quoted today by most socialist writers: “Workers of
the world, unite!” It is a sentence which has run through many
socialist groups. What does it express? It expresses the most
unnatural thing that could possibly be thought today. It expresses an
impulse for socializing, for uniting a certain mass of people. On what
is this uniting, this union, to be built? Upon its opposite, upon the
hatred of all those who are not members of the working class. This
associating, this banding together of people is to be brought about
through splitting up and separating mankind into classes. You must
ponder this, you must think about the reality of this principle which
is a genuine illusion, if I can use this expression, and which has
been adopted in Russia, now in Germany and the Austrian countries, and
which will eat its way further and further into the world. It is so
unnatural precisely because, on the one hand, it shows the necessity
of socializing, but on the other it builds this socialization out of
the anti-social instinct of class hatred, and class opposition.

However, these things need to be considered from a higher perspective,
otherwise we shall not get very far; above all, we shall not be able
to participate in the healthy development of mankind in the present.
Nowadays Spiritual Science is the only means of seeing things truly in
their totality; it is the only means for understanding our time. Just
as one is adverse to entering into the spirit and soul foundations of
man's physical constitution, so one also avoids, out of fear and lack
of courage, studying those things in social life which can only be
understood out of the Spirit. People are afraid, cover their eyes and
put their heads in the sand like ostriches when they are confronted by
real and important things. Of what does human interchange in fact
consist? As we have seen, it consists of one person trying to put the
other to sleep, while the other tries to resist and stay awake. This
is the archetypal phenomenon of social science in Goethe's sense. This
archetypal phenomenon points to something which mere material thinking
cannot grasp; it points to that which can only be understood when one
knows that in human life one is not only asleep during sleep — when
we slumber along for hours, oblivious to the world — but the same
applies to daily waking life, where the same forces which lead to
sleep and wakefulness also play into the social and anti-social forces
of man. All thinking about social forms can bear no fruit if we do not
make the effort to take these things into account.

With this in mind, we must not be blind to the events taking place in
the world, but must carefully watch what is coming to pass. What, for
example, does the socialist of today think? He thinks that he can
invent socialist slogans and call to men from all countries —
“Workers of the world, unite!” and by so doing, establish
a sort of international Paradise.

This indeed is one of the greatest and most fatal illusions. People
are not abstract, but concrete. Fundamentally, the human being is
individual. I have tried to make this clear in my Philosophy of
Freedom, in contrast to the relativism of Neo-Kantianism and
socialism. Men are also different according to their groupings over
the world. We will discuss one of these differences so that we may see
that it is not possible to simply say: — “You begin in the
West, and carry out a certain social system, then you go to the East and
then home again, as if taking a world tour.” But the attitude of
taking a world journey lives in those who wish to spread socialism over
the whole earth. They look upon the earth as a globe on which they, by
starting in the West, can eventually arrive in the East. But people on
the earth are different — and exactly in this difference dwells an
impulse which is the motive force of progress.

You can see how, in this way, provision is made for the Consciousness
Soul through birth and heredity. This actually comes to expression in
the English-speaking people of today. They are organized for the
Consciousness Soul through their blood, their birthright, and their
inherited faculties. Because the English-speaking peoples have been
especially prepared for the cultivation of the Consciousness Soul they
are, in a way, representatives of the fifth Post-Atlantean period.
People are thus differentiated according to where they live and how
they are constituted.

The Eastern peoples must effect and represent the true development of
humanity in another way. Beginning with the Russian people, and
passing on to the people of the Asiatic countries — one finds an
opposition, a revolt against the instinctive elements natural to the
evolution of the Consciousness Soul. The people of the East wish to
save the soul treasure of intellectuality of the present age for the
future. They do not want it to be mixed with experience, but wish to
liberate and preserve it for the next period. During this period, a
true union can take place between the human being and the evolved
Spirit Self. Thus, if the characteristic force of our present period
is in the West, and can indeed be best cultivated as a quality among
the English-speaking peoples, the people of the east, out of their
national inheritance, seek to prevent the coming-to-pass in their
souls of that which is most characteristic of the present period — so
that it may develop in them as a germ for the following period, which
begins with the 30th century. From this we can see the fact that
certain laws prevail in human life, and in human evolution. In the
realm of nature people are not surprised that they cannot burn ice,
that a regular law underlies this phenomenon. But with the social
structures of humanity, people fancy that the same social form, based
on the same social principles, can, for example, be made to work in
Russia, as in England, Scotland, or America. This is impossible, for
the whole world is organized by underlying principles so that one
cannot simply create identical forms at will all over the globe. This
is a point which we must not forget.

In the Central European countries there is a middle condition of
affairs. There, it is as if one were in a balanced condition, between
the extremes of the East and the West. Looked at in this way, we see
the Earth population divided into three parts. You cannot say:
“Workers of the world, unite!” For the workers are of three
sorts, are three varieties of people. Let us look at the people of the West
again. We find a special disposition, a special mission for all who
speak English by nature (single cases may be different) — a
disposition for the cultivation of the Consciousness Soul. This
disposition expresses itself in not detaching from the soul its
characteristic quality of intelligence, but connecting this
intelligence naturally, instinctively, with events in the world. To
naturally, even instinctively, place oneself in the life of the world
as a consciousness soul individual is the task of the English-speaking
people. The expanse and greatness of the British Empire rests on this
quality. Indeed herein lies the original phenomenon behind the
expansion of the British Empire — that which is hidden in the
impulses of its people exactly coincided with the inner impulses of
the age. In my lectures on the European folk souls, you will find what
is essential in this matter. Much is contained in this series of
lectures which were given long before the war, but which provide
material for judging this war-catastrophe objectively
(see Note 1).

Now, the very capacities connected with the evolution of the
Consciousness Soul give the English-speaking peoples a special genius
for political life. One can study how the political art of dividing
society and creating social structure has spread from England to those
countries where things have remained backward, where the remnants of
the fourth Post-Atlantean period have remained. This influence has
spread even to the division of Hungarian society, to this Turanian
member of the European peoples. It is only from the English heritage
that a foundation for the political thinking of the fifth
Post-Atlantean period can come. The English are specially suited to
the realm of politics. It is of no use to pronounce a judgment on
these things, the necessities of the case alone do so. One may feel
sympathy or the opposite — that is a private affair. Objective
necessity determines the affairs of the world. It is important that
these objective necessities shall be clearly placed before us at this
time.

Goethe,
in his
Legend of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily,
has treated the forces of the human soul as three members, or forces;
Power, Appearance, and Knowledge or Wisdom — or, as the Bronze King,
the Silver King and the Golden King. Many remarkable things are spoken
of in this legend, regarding the governing relationships which are
being prepared for the present and which will live into the future. We
can point out that what Goethe symbolizes by the Bronze king, the
force of Power, is that which spreads over the world through the
English-speaking peoples. This is necessary because the culture of the
Consciousness Soul coincides with the special qualities of the British
and American peoples.

In the Central European countries, which are not in such a state of
chaos, there is an unmistakable equilibrium between the Leaning of the
intellect toward the Consciousness Soul, and the desire to be free
from it; there, sometimes one prevails, sometimes the other. None of
the Central European nations is really suited for political life. When
they desire to be political, they are disposed to lose contact with
reality. Whereas the political thinking of the Anglo-American nations
is firmly anchored in the soul, in the Central European countries, it
is not, for the second soul force dominates — Semblance and
Appearance. However, the people of the Central European countries
manifest an intellectuality of special brilliance. Compare anything
that the English-speaking people have to say about the nature of
thinking — and you will find the thoughts strongly linked to solid
earth-realities. But if you take the brilliant feats of the German
mind — you will find that they are more an aesthetic shaping of
thoughts, even if the aesthetic shaping has a logical form. It is
especially noticeable how one thought leads to another so that
thoughts of value appear in dialectical form, shaped by an aesthetic
will. If one wishes to apply this to solid earth-realities — if one
wishes by this means to become a politician — then one easily becomes
untrue; one easily falls into a so-called dreamy idealism which seeks
to establish united kingdoms, with decade-long calls for unity — but
in the end sets up a mighty State by force. Never before has there
been such a contrast in political Life as the one between the dream of
unity in 1848 and that which was really established in 1871
(see Note 2).
There you see the swing of the pendulum, the shift from that which really
strives for aesthetic form, which can become untrue, an illusion, a
dreamy picture when one wishes to apply it to politics. Here, there is
simply no disposition for politics. When the Central European people
become politicians they either dream or they lie. I should add that
these things must not be discussed with sympathy or antipathy in order
to accuse or to acquit. Rather, they must be said, because on the one
hand they correspond with a need, and on the other with a tragedy.
These are things that we must heed.

And if we then look to the East, things are quite different again. We
have seen that the German, if he wants to be political, falls into a
dreamy idealism or, at its worst, into untruth. The Russian on the
other hand becomes ill or actually suffers a death if he desires to be
political. This may seem strange, yet a Russian person has a
constitution which creates a disposition towards disease, towards
death, with intensive political involvement. The Russian Folk Soul has
absolutely no affinity with that quality in the English and American
Folk Soul which creates a political capacity. But because of this, the
East has the task of carrying the intellect separated from its natural
connection with the world of sense experience into the future age of
the Spirit-Self.

One must therefore know how different abilities are spread among the
people of the earth. This becomes visible in many areas. You have, for
example, heard about the super-sensible experience called “The Meeting
with the Guardian of the Threshold”. There are marked differences in
this meeting with the Guardian. Where this meeting, this initiation,
is effected entirely independent of nationality, then it is objective
and complete. But when this initiation occurs through special groups
or societies connected with a particular people or nation, then it is
one-sided. The English-speaking peoples are those who, when not guided
by higher spiritual leaders but by their own Folk Soul, are especially
suited for bringing to the Threshold those spiritual beings who
surround and accompany us in this world of Ahrimanic spirits, and whom
we take with us when we approach the super-sensible world, if they have
developed a certain liking for us. They then lead us primarily to an
experience of the power of sickness and death. You will therefore hear
it said by the greater number of Anglo-Americans initiated into the
super-sensible Mysteries, that the first more important event in their
cognition of the super-sensible world is the encounter with those
powers expressing sickness and death. They learn to know this as an
external, outward experience.

If you turn to the Central European people what will you find, when
those who are being initiated are not taken out of their nation and
raised to universal humanity, but when the Folk Spirit co-operates
with them? Then the first important experience which comes to our
notice is a conflict between those spiritual beings who belong to
higher worlds, to the other side of the Threshold, and certain other
beings who are here in the physical world, on this side of the
Threshold but who are invisible to ordinary consciousness. The Central
Europeans will first become aware of this conflict. The experience of
this conflict makes itself felt to the genuine seeker after truth in
the Central European countries as a being penetrated with the powers
of doubt. One becomes acquainted with all the powers of
“many-sidedness”. In Western countries, there is a stronger
inclination to be satisfied with exact truth; whereas in the Central European
countries there is a tendency to immediately see the other side of the
question. There, in the searching for truth, one trembles in the
balance. Everything has two sides. One is regarded as a Philistine in
Central Europe if one ventures a one-sided opinion. But this causes
tragic suffering when nearing the Threshold. We must pay attention to
this struggle which takes place at the Threshold, between spirits
which belong only to the spirit world, and those belonging to the
world of sense — this struggle which conditions all that calls forth
doubt in man, this vacillation with regard to the truth. It is this
experience of doubt which creates the European need to be trained in
the truth — in philosophy — so as not to fall prey so easily
to the generally recognized impulses of truth in society.

When you turn to the Eastern countries — and the Folk Soul acts a
sponsor at the initiation — then one primarily experiences the
spirits that work upon human egotism. One sees all that gives rise to
human selfishness. The Westerner who approaches the Threshold does not
see this. Instead, he sees the spirits that permeate the world and
humanity with sickness and death in the broadest sense, as injurious,
destructive and degrading for humanity. The Neophyte of the East,
however, sees all that comes forward to tempt man as selfishness.
Therefore, the ideal which proceeds from Western initiation is making
men healthy and keeping them healthy, and giving mankind the
possibility of healthy development. In the East, on the other hand,
there springs up, as instinctive knowledge in connection to a
religious orientation toward initiation, a feeling of one's own
insignificance when faced with the sublime powers of the spiritual
world. The man of the East, when meeting the spiritual world, is shown
how selfishness may be cured, and egotism destroyed because of its
dangers. This is even expressed in the external character of people
from the East. Much of the Eastern character which is inexplicable to
people from the West arises precisely from what is expressed at the
Threshold of the spiritual world.

So we can see the differences in human qualities when we look at the
inner development, the inner shaping of the psycho-spiritual
development of humanity. It is important to keep this clearly in mind.
In certain occult circles of the English-speaking people who were
under the guardianship of the Folk Spirits, prophetic sayings could be
found during the second half of the 19th century which referred to the
things we have been discussing, things which are happening today.
Think of what could have happened if the people of Europe, with the
exception of those speaking English, had not stopped up their ears and
blindfolded their eyes, so that their attention was directed from the
truth of these things. I will tell you of a formula which was
frequently repeated during the second half of the 19th century. The
following was said: — “The State must be abolished in Russia, so
that the Russian people may develop, for in Russia social experiments must
be carried out, which could never be done in Western countries”. This
might seem unsympathetic to non-English ears, but it contains a high
degree of wisdom and insight. And he who can connect himself with
these things so that he can believe in their efficacy as impulses in
whose realization he can take part, this person is truly of the
present age
(see Note 3).
Those who do not see the reality of these forces set
themselves against the time.

These matters must be clearly understood. It was, of course, the
inevitable lot of Central and Eastern Europe to block their ears and
blindfold their eyes to occult facts; to give no heed to them, to work
on lines of mysticism, abstract teaching, and abstract
intellectualism. But we are now in a time when this must cease.
Pessimism and despair must not be created by such contemplations as
these. Rather force, courage, and the will to help is needed. In this
sense we should always remember that we do not work against, but
rather with the issues of our time — out of the spiritual scientific
impulse of the Anthroposophical Movement. Let us see to it that we do
not sleep away our opportunities. Spiritual Science can lead us to the
conscious cultivation of social faculties. It can, for example, show
us the forces at work in the human being when he is free from the
body, what he is experiencing between going to sleep and awaking. But
more importantly it can give us a direction in conscious waking life
for developing social capacities. We of course cultivate the powers
most necessary for our age when we are consciously thinking about
those things which can only forcefully penetrate into our soul during
waking hours. We could not develop, we would be powerless, if we only
had to evolve during sleep. It is for our waking life that the
following is therefore important.

Two powers are working in the present. One is the power which since
the Mystery of Golgotha has worked in different metamorphoses through
the ensuing periods of earth evolution as the Christ Impulse. We have
often said that just in our age a reappearance of the Etheric Christ
will take place. This reappearance of the Christ is indeed not far
off. That He is coming again is no cause for pessimism, nor should it
give rise to a nebulous longing and a desire for soul-warming,
self-seeking, theosophical theories. The Christ Impulse has various
forms, but in His present form He wishes to help humanity realize that
spiritual wisdom now being revealed by the spiritual world. This
wisdom wants to be realized and the Christ Impulse will be a help in
this realization. It is on this realization that all depends. At this
critical moment humanity is faced with a momentous decision. On the
one side stands the Christ Being, calling us of our own free will to
do what we have been speaking about today, to consciously and freely
receive the social impulses which can heal and help humanity. Freely,
to receive them. Therefore, we do not unite ourselves on those levels
where hatred forms a foundation for love as in the cry, “Workers of
the world, unite!” But we unite by striving to realize the Christ
Impulse, by doing those things which are the will of Christ for this
age.

Opposed to this will stands the adversary who is called in the Bible
“the unrighteous Prince of this World”.He makes his presence
known in various ways. One of these ways is to take those forces which
allow us as free beings to serve that which we have been talking about
today, to take this force of free will and to place it at the service of
the physical. This adversary, the Prince of this world, has various
instruments; for example, hunger and social chaos. By this means,
through external compulsion, and physical measures, the force of free
will is subverted to the service of apparent necessity. See how
humanity today shows that it will not of its own free will turn to a
truly social life, and to a recognition of true progress for mankind.
It wishes to be compelled. And yet, this compulsion has not even led
people to make the basic distinction between the Spirit of the
super-sensible world, the Christ Spirit and the adversary, the
unrighteous Prince of this world. Look at this situation and see if
this does not explain why in so many places today men oppose and
struggle against the acceptance of any true spiritual teaching,
against true spiritual deeds, and against Spiritual Science. They are
possessed by the unrighteous Prince of this world.

Now think for a moment; think how you of your own free will turn to
spiritual life; think humbly of yourselves, but also earnestly and
strongly as the missionaries of the Christ-Spirit today, who have to
combat the unrighteous Prince of this world, who lays hold of all
those who unconsciously allow themselves to use forces out of the
future to realize their own aims. If you think of yourselves in this
light there is no room for pessimism — indeed it leaves you no time
for a pessimistic view of the world. It will of course not shut your
eyes and ears to that which has happened, sometimes in a terrible
manner — and which is tragic to behold in its true form. But you will
preeminently keep the following before your souls — “I am, in any
case, called to look at everything without illusion; I must be neither
pessimistic nor optimistic, so that forces may awaken in my soul which
give me the power to aid the free development of the human being, to
contribute to human progress in the place and situation where I am”.
Even if the faults and tragedies of the age are very visible to
Spiritual Science this should not be an incitement to pessimism or
optimism, but rather a call to an inner awakening so that independent
work and the cultivation of right thinking will result. For above all
things, adequate insight is necessary. If only a sufficient number of
people today were motivated to say, “We absolutely must have a better
understanding of things”; then everything else would follow. It is
just in regard to social questions that there is a need to consciously
strive for insight and understanding. The development of the will
activity is planned for, it is coming. If we in daily life would only
wish to educate ourselves about social issues, and develop new social
ideas, then (according to an occult law), each of us would be able to
take another human being along. Each one of us can therefore work for
two if we have the will. We could achieve much if we had an earnest
desire to acquire insight at once. The rest would follow. It is not so
bad that not many people can do much about the situation of society
today, but it is incredibly sad if people cannot at least make up
their minds to become acquainted with the social laws of Spiritual
Science. The rest would follow if serious study would take place.

This is what I have desired to communicate to you today regarding the
importance of knowing and recognizing certain things about the social
situation of the present, and how such a recognition can lead to a
life impulse for the future. I hope we will again have the opportunity
of speaking together about the more intimate aspects of Spiritual
Science.

Here and in other references to Russia in this lecture, Rudolf
Steiner appears to be referring to the political attitudes and
behaviour of Germany and Austria toward Russia during the time
of the Russian revolution when the actions of the central powers
certainly strengthened the hands of the Bolsheviks against more
moderate social democratic forces.